


The Silver-Tongued Conman Loses His Voice

by ariadnes_string



Category: White Collar
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-26
Updated: 2011-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you have to leave the comfort for the hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silver-Tongued Conman Loses His Voice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rabidchild67](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/gifts).



> a/n: This fic is gen, but there are discussions of human trafficking and the sexual coercion of minors, and also some crude sexual language.  
> a/n: This is a very, very late fic for the wonderful rabidchild67 who first made a generous bid for my fic in the help_japan auction, then waited months for said fic, and _then_ read the first half of this one and gave me the key to finally finishing it. I wish this were better, bb, because you only deserve the best!  
>  a/n: I had so much help with this one! Harrigan and Taste_is_sweet and were kind enough to read the first half and offer extremely helpful advice. Rabidchild67 also read the first half and set me on the path to finishing it. And then harrigan did a superfast and helpful final beta on it. Thank you all! And all remaining problems completely my own fault!  
> a/n: My rendition of Hmong here is my guess as to how Neal would hear it and bears no relation to the actual language.

“Got something special for us tomorrow night,” Giraldi said, his growl whiskey-rough. It was the voice of a longshoreman, Neal always thought, not that of a sleek, tiny, businessman in a bespoke suit. “A little treat.”

Giraldi held his phone over the restaurant table between them and beckoned Neal closer. Conjuring up up an anticipatory smile, Neal inclined his head, although he was sure that Giraldi’s treat would be no more palatable than the dinner they had just shared.

But Neal had spent a long time convincing Giraldi that he was the perfect buyer for the illegal Southeast Asian antiquities Giraldi was bringing through New York harbor. He was here to find out where and when the shipment would arrive so that the FBI could set up the bust. The heavy red wine Giraldi had chosen, combined with the man’s brutally masculine bonhomie, had given him a splitting headache, but breaking character was out of the question.

“Turns out the same boat that’s bringing your knickknacks is bringing in these beauties.” Giraldi tapped the screen, and a picture of a young girl—a very young girl, Neal realized with an unpleasant twinge—appeared. “And I thought, as a token of our new friendship, I’d give you a taste before sending them on to their future employers. Your choice of the shipment. She’s the best of them, I think. But maybe you’d prefer her.”

He touched the phone again and the girl was replaced by another. This one was even younger, dark hair loose on her shoulders, almond eyes opened wide. The frightened look—the pleading—was supposed to be part of the appeal, Neal realized. He was close to real nausea now.

“Ah,” said Giraldi, attuned to Neal’s reaction. “Maybe you don’t like the ladies? Maybe a boy?” He brushed his blunt finger over the screen and another picture came up. Just a kid—hair shorn to the skin, jaw clenched in defiance. “A firecracker, that one—the kind where breaking him’s half the fun.”

Neal shook his head and tried to think of a way to demur politely. But his voice felt stuck somehow, clogged with disgust. He cleared his throat.

Giraldi was on a roll. “There’s always this one. Can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl. Best of both worlds, eh?”

This one was the worst. Androgynous, yes—short hair and a crewneck tee-shirt, sharp-features. And eyes that seemed to know everything already.

Neal opened his mouth, though for once he wasn’t sure what he was about to say. A protest, maybe—an excuse. All that came out was a croak.

“What’s that?” Giraldi asked mockingly. “She got you going already? Figured you’d be the type who knew how to hold his horses, Halden. But if this one does it for you, by all means, be my guest.”

Neal found his voice at last, though it sounded choked. “Yes,” he said, “this one.” Anything to end the hideous display. “Where and when is the ship docking?”

Giraldi chuckled nastily. “So impatient, my friend. Don’t worry, she’s not going anywhere. Come to my office tomorrow at three—we’ll go together.”

“Busy afternoon, tomorrow, I’m afraid. “ Some of Neal’s sangfroid thankfully came back to him. “Let me know which pier and I’ll meet you there.”

“We’ll go together.” Giraldi stood, pocketing his phone. “Don’t be late.”

He was out the door of the restaurant before Neal could respond.

Left alone, Neal took a moment to steady himself. The parade of faces had upset him more than such things usually did. Though maybe it was the wine. Or the rich, overly salted food the restaurant had dished up. In any case, his head was swimming and his gut was churning. And he couldn’t seem to swallow away the burn of bile in his throat.

Peter. He had to let Peter know that this was worse than they’d thought. That Giraldi was dealing in people as well as urns and statuary. He had his own phone half out of his pocket before he realized that for one thing, Giraldi might have someone watching him. And that for another, he didn’t trust his voice.

Better to go in person.

+++

It was after midnight by the time he made it to Brooklyn.

Still worried about being followed, he’d switched cabs twice and then had the last one drop him several blocks from Peter’s place, ducking into an open entranceway until he was sure he’d lost any tails. The night had been warm enough for a light overcoat when he’d set off to meet Giraldi, but the temperature seemed to have dropped five degrees for every hour of darkness, and by the time he rang the Burke’s doorbell he was shivering.

Peter opened the door in an old LeMoyne sweatshirt and pajama bottoms. He was rubbing his eyes with his free hand.

“Neal?” he said, like Neal had better have a pretty good reason for getting him out of bed. “It’s okay, honey,” he called in the direction of the stairs. “It’s only Neal—go on back to bed.”

Neal heard muted footsteps and the tail end of something that might have been “don’t stay up too late.” For a moment, he wondered whether he should have thought through the decision to come straight here a bit more carefully. But no—this was serious. Peter had to know.

“Peter. Giraldi. It’s worse. Really worse.” The choked feeling was back, only more painful this time. Getting the words out was like sandpaper across a scraped knee.

Peter stopped rubbing his eyes and reached for Neal’s elbow, drawing him into the house. “You okay? You sound kinda--. You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just—“ He followed Peter in toward the dining room table, shedding his coat and hat as he went, the heat of the house throwing him from shivering to sweating in an instant. “He’s got these girls. On his phone. “ That wasn’t right. “On a boat. He wants me to have one.” The faces floated in front of him with surprising vividness and he fought down another wave of nausea.

Peter looked at him as if Neal wasn’t quite making sense. “Sit down a minute. You seem sort of worked up.” He pulled a chair out from the table. “Have some water, okay—or a beer—then tell me about it.”

Neal sat. But popped up again instantly, trailing Peter into the kitchen.

“For sex. He’s bringing in girls—and boys—for sex.” That didn’t sound right. There was a phrase for this—the kind of FBI euphemism Peter would respond to—it was on the tip of Neal’s tongue--.

He took the glass of water Peter was holding out to him, suddenly desperately thirsty. It was like swallowing knives, but the pain seemed to bring the phrase back to him. “Human trafficking,” he said triumphantly.

Peter’s expression changed into something fiercer, more professional. “Really? Are you sure?”

Neal nodded and took another gulp of water. This time it hurt so much going down he made an involuntary little grunt of pain.

“Neal?” Peter looked at him for a moment, and then pressed a palm to his forehead. He held it there a minute, then put the other hand on Neal’s neck. “Okay, we’re gonna deal with that,” he said firmly. “If Giraldi’s dealing in people he’s not gonna get away with it. But first I need you to go sit down for me, Neal.”

“Why? There’s no time for that,” Neal protested. Peter sounded like he was going to read Neal the riot act for coming here. Read him the riot act and then call him a cab.

“Because you feel like a goddamn furnace, that’s why,” Peter said, grimmer than ever. “And you’re going to go sit down while I get some Tylenol and the thermometer.”

Oh. It hadn’t occurred to Neal that some of what he was feeling wasn’t an emotional reaction to Giraldi’s “surprise.” He felt a little stupid—usually he was more self-aware. But even if the headache, sore throat and nausea were the result of some bug, it didn’t mean that Giraldi wasn’t importing sex workers tomorrow night. He tried to say as much to Peter, but Peter said, “later,” and pointed to the couch.

Once he got off his feet, Neal was forced to add exhaustion to his list of symptoms. Satchmo padded over to him, stuck his cold nose against Neal’s thigh, but it seemed too much of an effort even to pet him.

He tried bringing up Giraldi again when Peter came back, but even the action of forming words in his throat was starting to be painful, so he took the thermometer Peter held out to him and put it under his tongue instead.

Even before it beeped, Neal realized it had probably been a mistake to come here. His cover might already be blown.

“Sorry,” he rasped, passing the thing to Peter. “Shouldn’t have jeopardized the operation like that.”

“Were you followed?” Peter frowned at the thermometer.

Neal shook his head.

“Well, what’s done is done. 101.3—I can see how you’d be a little fuzzy.” Peter dropped an unexpected, comforting hand on Neal’s head, and held out the Tylenol in the other. “Listen, now that you’re here you might as well stay. I’ll make some inquiries into Giraldi’s connections to sex slavery. You take these and go crash in the guest room. Hopefully you’ll feel better in the morning, and we’ll figure it out then.”

+++

Neal had no memory of getting himself upstairs or undressing, but the next thing he knew he was half-naked under the Burke’s second-best duvet and Elizabeth had her cool fingers on his forehead.

“He’s really hot, Peter,” she was saying. “What’s going on?”

“Damned if I know. Showed up last night, babbling about prostitution rings and human trafficking. Didn’t even seem to know he was sick.” El’s smooth, light fingers were replaced by Peter’s more callused, heavier ones. “You’re right—worse than before maybe.” There was a note of worry in Peter’s voice now. That hadn’t been there last night either.

Neal tried to surface then, if only to tell them to keep their hands off the merchandise, but he seemed to be quite a long way under.

“Neal.” Peter was gently shaking his shoulder now. “Wake up, buddy.”

Neal finally unglued his sticky eyelids. Peter and Elizabeth were staring down at him, wearing matching expressions of sympathetic concern. Peter was still in his sweatshirt and pajama bottoms; Elizabeth was wrapped in a cotton Liberty print robe. The whole scene was so ridiculously domestic Neal started to laugh. But the laugh turned into a cough, and the cough hurt his throat so much he worried he might cry instead.

“Easy there, hon’.” Elizabeth squeezed his bare shoulder. “You okay?”

Neal opened his mouth to reassure her, but all that came out was a sad little gust of air. He could feel his breath passing over the place where it usually turned into words, but it wouldn’t catch. He tried a few more times, throat clenching painfully. Nothing.

Peter and Elizabeth stared at him, the faintest tinge of amusement now coloring their concern.

“Neal,” said Peter slowly, “have you lost your voice?”

Neal nodded, feeling his face furrow as he tried to get his mind around the disaster.

“Well, I never.” Peter was clearly trying hard not to smile. “To think I’d see the day when the great Neal Caffrey couldn’t talk his way out of something.”

“Peter!” Elizabeth cuffed him lightly. “It’s not funny. Go get the poor man some medicine and some juice.”

“Yeah.” Peter’s face slid back towards sympathy as he rose. “Gonna call the FBI doctor while I’m at it, too.”

+++

It appeared that the Bureau employed a doctor willing to make house calls, and a short time later Neal sat at the Burkes’ dining room table awaiting her arrival. Elizabeth had tried to make him stay in bed, but he’d refused. He was, however, beginning to suspect he’d made the wrong decision.

He was dressed in a pair of Peter’s slightly too-big pajamas, with another old sweatshirt over them (New York Giants this time) and a blue terry robe on top of that. He was sick enough to find the faint smell of Peter clinging to the clothes comforting. But not so sick that he hadn’t managed to fight with Peter over the case, laryngitis be damned.

“Here.” Peter had handed him his phone as soon as he’d stumbled downstairs. “You should probably text Giraldi and tell him you can’t make the meet.”

Neal had shaken his head vehemently, though it’d made him feel like his brain was slamming against his skull. He’d taken the phone, sagged into one of the straight-back chairs, and typed “Human trafficking, remember?” into the messaging function. He’d waved the screen at Peter, disturbed to see his hand shaking a little.

“I know it’s human trafficking, Neal.” Peter made calming movements with his hands. “Connections started popping up the minute I started digging. And like I said last night, we’re gonna get him for this, we are. What I’m saying is, we’re going to have to find a different way to do it. I think you’re out of the picture for now.”

Not satisfied, Neal had pecked furiously at the phone’s search engine with clumsy fingers until he’d pulled up the kind of image he was looking for. Not the same girl, obviously, but close enough to be her sister. He held the picture out to Peter. Then he pointed to himself. They had to carry out the plan for today, with him, or it would be too late for all the kids he had seen last night.

A mix of pity and outrage had flashed across Peter’s face at the sight of the girl’s vulnerable, half-terrified face. “That evil fuck,” he’d said, before he could get himself under control. “Okay—yeah—we’re going to get him—you just have to hang tight and let me think of Plan B.”

“No,” Neal had typed. “I’m going back in. He trusts me. There’s no time to set something else up. I’ll be fine by this afternoon.” He’d felt absurdly close to tears, undone by his own frailty, another round of shivers climbing his spine.

“Neal.” Peter had actually grabbed his shoulder, looking almost as upset as Neal felt. “You know I want to, but I can’t let you endanger yourself—and the plan—like that—“

Finally Elizabeth had intervened. “Okay, boys,” she’d said, guiding Neal into a chair and putting a steaming mug in front of him. “Calm down. You don’t have to decide this now. Neal, you have some tea. Peter, you go—do some research or something. We’ll see what the doctor has to say. Maybe she’ll have some kind of instant cure and it’ll all be a moot point.”

Peter had glared, but withdrawn. Neal had stared at the mug, dreading getting even liquid down his throat. Part of him knew it was an effect of fever and weakness, but he couldn’t shake the urgency gripping him. He imagined he could see the girls’ faces instead of his own reflected on the surface of the tea.

+++

Dr. Squires, when she arrived, was in her late fifties, barrel-shaped and barely five feet tall in sensible heels. But she looked like she’d made a career out of showing tough guys just how tough they weren’t. Ex-military, Neal decided, as she measured his pulse and blood-pressure, swabbed his throat and took his temperature—barely lowered at all by the morning’s dose of Tylenol.

Peter and Elizabeth looked on, arms crossed and those same matching concerned expressions on their faces.

Even more annoyingly, the doctor addressed Peter rather than Neal when she’d finished her examination, as if Neal had lost his hearing instead of his voice. “Some kind of bacterial throat infection,” she said. “I don’t think it’s strep, but I won’t know for sure until I get the results of the culture. With the temp he’s running, it seems pretty aggressive, whatever it is. I’d feel best if he came back to the clinic with me so we could start some IV antibiotics and saline.”

Neal widened his eyes meaningfully at Peter. And then winced. Even his eye sockets hurt. To his surprise, however, Peter seemed to agree with him.

“I’d rather he didn’t. He’s in the middle of an undercover operation and he may have been tailed here last night. Even if he wasn’t, there’s a chance that there are people on the lookout for him in the city. I’d rather not give up the game until we’ve decided how we’re going to play our part of it. Could you set the IV up here?”

“Yes, if you think that’s necessary.” Dr. Squires looked doubtful. “I have the supplies in my car. I’d have to send someone back with the right antibiotic, though, once I get the results back.”

“We can get a prescription filled,” Peter said. “And I can run it through the IV.”

“You can?” Elizabeth asked.

“Quantico,” said Peter, as if that explained everything, and turned back to the doctor. “What about his voice? Anything you can do about that?”

“Not really. I can leave him some analgesic spray for the pain. And it may improve once the infection backs off some. Or it could linger for days. Tricky thing, laryngitis.”

“So he won’t be able to do any work today, that’s what you’re telling me, right?” Peter addressed Dr. Squires, but looked directly at Neal.

“Your call, Agent Burke,” she said, shrugging. “A dose or two of antibiotics can work wonders sometimes.”

Neal smiled at Peter, even though that kind of hurt, too.

+++

Being back in the Burke’s comfortable spare bed—this time with an IV line running out of his arm and prescription strength painkillers in his system—made it hard to press the point, however. Not that that stopped Neal from giving it his best shot.

“I can do it, Peter. I don’t need my voice.” He clung to his phone like a life preserver, pecking at it, well, feverishly, even as the tiny keyboard blurred in front of his exhausted eyes.

“Mmm.” Peter glanced at the words and went back to arranging the stack of blankets Elizabeth had given him around Neal. “Why don’t you rest for a bit, huh? And then we’ll see where we are.”

Peter had dropped the sternness and was speaking—solicitously? kindly? Neal frowned. It could only mean one thing. Peter was humoring him. He fully expected Neal to sleep through the rest of the day, leaving Peter to do what he wanted with the Giraldi operation.

Neal squirmed himself slightly more upright, disturbing the nest of blankets Peter was building. He made a sound like a crow-squawk. Ugly, but it was all he was capable of right now. It got Peter’s attention at least. With a what-is-it-now sigh, he sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Neal expectantly.

Satisfied, Neal tapped out more words on the phone. “Send someone with me if u don’t think I can do it myself.”

“Call me crazy, but I _don’t_ think you can do it yourself. Seeing as how you can’t talk. Or eat solid food. Or stand up for more than five minutes at a time. Jesus, Neal, what is it with you and this case?”

Neal didn’t know. Or at least he had no answer he could reduce to the tiny screen of the phone. He settled for squirming more vigorously, bumping Peter with his knee. Peter sighed again, and patted Neal’s leg through the blankets.

“Alright, alright, calm down. You need a lip-man, huh?” he asked, smiling a little at his own joke. “Who? I can’t go—he’d make me for a Fed in sixty seconds flat. Same for Diana or Jones. You wanna take Mozzie? _If_ you go—which seems extremely unlikely at the moment, I have to say.”

Neal shook his head. That was starting to hurt less, at least. “Not Moz. Alex.”

Peter nodded. He seemed to be starting to take the idea seriously, despite himself. “I suppose that makes sense. She has a lot of cred in those circles. But Neal, Alex hasn’t always been what you’d call reliable. You’re not too sick to remember that, are you? Plus, do you even know where she is?”

Neal conceded the point. But the fact that Peter was starting to consider the details of the plan was a step toward victory. He could feel himself starting to relax, to sink deeper into the warm blankets. “Moz will know,” he typed, each word taking longer than the last.

“And what makes you think she’ll do this for us, even if we do find her?”

“She’ll do it.” He could feel his grip on the phone loosening, his eyes closing.

“Okay.” Peter pulled a stray bit of blanket over his shoulder. “I’ll see what I can do. You get some sleep.”

+++

Neal slept hard but not peacefully. In his dreams, he was in some dark space, humid with the breath of closely packed people, and he was cramped, aching with confinement, shackles heavy on his wrists and ankles. He could see no faces in the gloom, but he knew he was with the girls and boys whose pictures Giraldi had shown him, was one of them, just as weak, just as helpless. His stomach twisted with fear of what would happen to him when they docked, and with a vast, bitter, loneliness. And then something close to panic overtook him. His lungs constricted as he struggled for air, heard himself almost gagging for it—

“Hey,” a voice said. “Hang on—you’re all tangled up in these.” Someone peeled away the walls of his prison, letting in fresher air. Neal coughed, and Peter—for of course it was Peter—rubbed hard between his shoulder blades, loosening up whatever it was, though the coughing still hurt.

“I’m just adding the antibiotics to the IV,” Peter said, with a last reassuring rub of Neal’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. Go back to sleep if you can.”

Neal stared at Peter for a moment, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t on a ship, wasn’t bound for slavery. Then he laid his head on the pillow again, feeling as if he were still half inside his dream. He’d come close to ending up in that kind of situation a few times, sure, back when he’d had to trade more on his looks than his expertise to get by. Been a hairsbreadth away, if he were honest. But it had never come to that. Why had it all seemed so real, then? So familiar?

He didn’t think he would go back to sleep. But he did.

+++

When he surfaced again, someone else had their hand on his face. What was it about being sick that made it National Touch Neal Caffrey Day? Not that he minded being touched as a rule; it was just that the diagnostic mode wasn’t his favorite, all things considered.

These fingers were too small to be Peter’s, too hard and narrow to be Elizabeth’s, and too tentative to be a doctor’s.

“Moz—“ Neal said, opening his eyes and forgetting he’d lost his voice. It came out more of an M-shaped croak.

Mozzie withdrew his hand and peered at Neal worriedly from his perch on the edge of the bed. Neal blinked back at him, letting the pieces of the situation drift gradually back into place. So Peter had gone so far as to call Mozzie—though whether to aid in the plan or to help him with Neal-wrangling it remained to be seen.

“You look terrible,” Mozzie said. “I told you working with the Suits was bad for your health. And now I hear you’ve jeopardized your most precious instrument.” He touched his own throat in illustration.

Neal pushed himself up on his elbows. He was feeling better, he decided. Light-headed and achy, but not as cold and shaky as before. A glance at the bedside clock told him he’d been asleep for almost three hours. He tried to smile reassuringly at Moz, feeling around for his phone before he remembered that Mozzie could read lips.

“Did you find Alex?” he mouthed.

Mozzie looked disapproving. “Of course I did. But for once I concur with the Suit and Mrs. Suit,” he said. “You should drop this one. Let someone else go. Husband your resources.” He gestured dramatically towards Neal’s torso.

“Who am I, Al Pacino? I’m fine,” Neal told him. “Nothing like that time in Houston.”

Wrong thing to not-say. Mozzie’s face went tight and hard. “Good. Because sitting in an ER waiting room watching you cough blood isn’t my idea of a fun day out. Yours either, if you recall.”

Neal did. He’d never seen Mozzie conjure up new identities for them so fast and out of so little. Or be that close to desperate. Neither that, nor the three days in the hospital with pneumonia, were things he wanted to repeat.

“Really, I’m fine.” He patted Mozzie’s hand. “What did Alex say?”

Mozzie smiled in a self-satisfied way, distracted from Neal’s condition by his own ingenuity. “I convinced her to come hear us out. Actually,” he paused, bemused, “it didn’t take as much persuading as I thought it would, once I explained. She’s here.”

“I knew you could do it, Moz,” Neal said. He’d known Alex would come, too, though he couldn’t have said how he knew. But something had told him she wouldn’t be able to ignore the plight of those kids, any more than he could.

He’d levered himself up to sitting and swung his feet around to the floor before he realized he was still tethered to the IV line. “Get this thing out, would you?”

“Not so fast, Camille.” Mozzie brandished a thermometer. “The Suit says if your temperature is under 101 you can come down and sit with the grown-ups. Otherwise I’m supposed to make you stay in bed.”

Rolling his eyes, Neal took it from him, and scowled at Mozzie until it beeped. He looked at the number and handed it to Moz.

“100.9,” he mouthed. “Good enough for government work.”

***

He did look terrible, Neal acknowledged, catching a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror as he splashed water on his face: sunken-eyed, hollow-cheeked and pale, as if he’d spent a week in bed instead of half a day. He dragged a hand through his hair, brushed his teeth with the spare toothbrush someone had thoughtfully left for him, and sighed. Pitiful, but it would have to do. At least Mozzie had brought him some clean clothes.

It was a little past one—plenty of time to get ready for the three o’clock meet with Giraldi.

Peter seemed to have put together a miniature command center in his living room, Neal discovered, as he made his way cautiously downstairs, Mozzie hovering anxiously behind him. Diana and Jones looked up at his approach, giving him the looks of pitying sympathy one reserves for people who really should have stayed in bed. Peter looked half worried and half exasperated. Elizabeth was out of sight somewhere, or had maybe gone to work. Only Alex, black-clad and elegant, regarded him coolly, assessingly.

Neal almost flinched. He liked a bit of attention when he was sick, sure—people murmuring sympathetically, smoothing his hair and bringing him rare blends of tea. But this was something else entirely. This was like people watching an experiment go horribly wrong.

Neal would have given any of his hidden treasures for his voice back. If he could talk, he knew he could convince them he was fine, ready to do this thing—and, more importantly, that the thing needed doing. As it was, he could only square his jaw and try to look determined. Which was hard, because he wanted badly to hunch his shoulders against the steel vise it still felt like someone was tightening around the base of his skull.

“I’ll do it,” said Alex, pushing herself off the wall where she’d been leaning and addressing Peter. “But he’s not coming with me. I’ll go in alone.”

Neal squawked inadvertently—and then rubbed a hand hard along his throat in humiliation and pain. He sat heavily on the bottom stair and shot Peter a look that was meant to be outraged, but was probably just beseeching.

“Not so fast, Alex,” Peter said. “Neal’s been working this one for weeks—he knows the situation better than anyone.”

“Then he can brief me. Look at him.” She gestured. “He looks like he’s been on a two-week bender. Giraldi won’t believe a word he says. Oh, excuse me, a word he won’t be able to say. He’s a wreck: if things go south...” She left the thought unfinished, but it was clear what she meant: Neal was a liability.

“You’re going to figure out a way to take him, or you’re going to take me. No way am I letting you conduct an FBI operation on your own,” Peter said.

“I’m afraid not, Agent Burke. We’ll do it my way or I’m out.” Alex’s face didn’t change.

Peter looked from Alex, poised and confident as an art nouveaux lithograph, to Neal, slumped in uncharacteristic dishevelment on the stairs. “Suit yourself,” he shrugged. “Walk away and let a major human trafficking ring operation continue. Underage girl and boys, sold into sexual slavery, or God knows what. Killed with impunity.”

Alex glared at him, to all appearances stony-faced, but Neal, who knew her so well, could tell there was some kind of struggle going on behind her eyes. Peter, too, seemed to sense his advantage. He swung his laptop around: there was a picture of a slender, dark-haired body, naked except for pink panties, lying in a pool of blood.

“Fourteen,” he said. “And already two years in bondage to the man who eventually killed her. She came in via the same route.”

Nothing changed on Alex’s face, but after a minute she said, “Okay, tell me what you’ve got.”

Peter gave her his most wolfish smile. “The Bureau appreciates your assistance, Ms. Hunter. Neal—brief her. You can use my laptop.”

As Neal made his way over to the computer, Peter drew him aside. Neal raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

“You were right about this guy,” Peter said in a harsh whisper. “A little digging led us right to an open file from Interpol Sex Crimes. They’ve been tracking this ring for years, apparently, but haven’t been able to figure out how it was moving them through New York. This is a big break for them, and they don’t want to lose it, or spook him by aborting the exchange. You really think you’re up to it?”

Neal smiled and thumped his chest, only coughing a little. “I’m golden,” he mouthed.

“And Alex?” Peter looked worried again. “You can make her toe the line?”

Neal gave him a “Please” twist of the lips, though that seemed like the trickiest part of the whole thing.

“I hate this,” Peter murmured.

But when Neal had settled in front of Peter’s computer, Alex at his shoulder, the first thing he typed was “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Not at all.” Alex leaned in so that her voice tickled his ear. “I just hate to be slowed down by a weaker partner, that’s all.”

“This wouldn’t be about that time I left you in the hospital in Copenhagen, would it?”

“Of course not, darling. I’d forgotten all about that. Until you brought it up.”

But before Neal could get very far into the details of his cover and Giraldi’s operation, his phone buzzed.

 _Change of plans_ , said Giraldi’s text. _Meet at 2_.

+++

“Okay, this is improvised at best,” Peter said, fastening the watch around Neal’s wrist. “It’s a good thing you know Morse code—and that we have a Navy man around to decipher it.” He smiled at Jones. “We’ve fixed it—“ Mozzie cleared his throat and Peter amended himself. “Mozzie fixed it so that if you tap the knob on the side, we’ll pick up the code in the van. You, Ms. Hunter, have a more conventional means of communication.” He handed her a pen. “Just speak into this, and it’ll come through to us. I’m still not sure how you’re going to communicate with each other,” he looked between them, half-worried, half-amused, “but I’m sure you’ll manage.”

Neal thought the same thing, right up until the moment their taxi pulled up to Giraldi’s brownstone.

There’d been no conversation in the cab, of course, but the silence had been easy, familiar, reminding him that in their day he and Alex pulled off many arguably more difficult things. He felt better than he had all day—his throat still burned, but his head was reasonably clear. He dared to think that the rest and drugs had actually done some good.

Giraldi was waiting for them on the sidewalk, attended by three larger, younger men, all in dark suits with the tell-tale bulges of shoulder holsters.

“Who have we here?” Giraldi growled—if a sound so oily could be called a growl—as Neal handed Alex out of the cab.

“Alex Hunter.” She extended a graceful hand. “Just helping out an old friend. Mr. Halden has unfortunately lost his voice.” She made a gently disapproving face, as if Neal foolishly mislaid it somewhere. “But I’m not here entirely altruistically—I understand you have certain commodities I may be able to help you with.”

“Alex Hunter.” Giraldi took her hand. “I’ve heard of you, of course—very glad to make your acquaintance.” Alex smiled regally. Giraldi surveyed Neal. “Laryngitis, eh? You do look like crap. Thought maybe you’d tied one on last night after dinner.” He swung a mock punch at Neal’s shoulder. It hurt. “Well, time’s a-wasting.” He snapped his fingers at his goons, one of whom moved to hold open the door of a black Town Car. “After you, Ms. Hunter.”

Neal let himself be ushered into the back seat next to Alex. Two of Giraldi’s men flanked them; the third drove, Giraldi himself riding shotgun. He kept a smile pasted on his face, but inside he was frowning. That had been too easy. He’d expected Giraldi to be more suspicious—not to take Alex’s presence on face value. He was taking them, after all, not only to see antiquities in which Alex might have a legitimate interest, but also human cargo, about which she might not be so sanguine. Neal had expected that they—well, Alex—would have to do a lot of fast talking, not the idle chit chat she was making now about the weather.

He assumed Alex had noticed the suspicious ease of the introduction as well—she was too experienced to have missed it—but if he’d had his voice, he would’ve dropped one of their old code words for trouble, just to make sure. He wished they’d had time to work out some non-verbal signals before the meet. As it was, he dug a finger into her hip.

“Poor darling.” Alex leaned into him and smoothed a hand over the back of his head, as naturally as if she’d actually been the kind of woman who did such things. “Could someone crack a window, please? It’s a bit stuffy in here.”

She did know: “crack a window” was one of their oldest alert signals.

The henchman on Neal’s right grunted and lowered his window infinitesimally. It wasn’t until the cooler air from outside hit his face that Neal realized he was sweating.

He realized something else, too. They weren’t heading south, towards the piers. They were heading north, the numbers on the street signs sliding past getting higher and higher.

He jabbed Alex again, but she must have noticed at the same time, because she asked Giraldi, voice studiously casual, “Nick said the shipment was coming in by sea.”

Giraldi twisted so he could see her, his face blank. “Arrived ahead of time—we’ve already moved it to a secure location. You can view it there. Did I forget to mention that? My apologies.”

He didn’t sound sorry at all. Neal’s conviction that something was severely amiss increased a thousand-fold. Peter and his team would be following them, but the bulk of the Bureau support would be positioned around the harbor. He tried to tap the code for “something wrong—black town car—heading north” through the button on his watch, but his hands were shaking again, and he wasn’t sure it went through. He wished for once that he was wearing the anklet, but that had been off since the meet with Giraldi last night.

He hoped Alex had thought to turn her pen to record.

“Boss,” the driver interrupted. “I think we’re being followed.”

“Fancy that.” Giraldi turned to face front again. “Well, you know what to do, Thomas.”

The driver certainly did seem to know what to do. He took a series of expert evasive actions through the city traffic, finally pulling into an alley next to a non-descript garage. Another car, this one a beige late-model Fiesta, was parked there too. Giraldi must have had the switch planned all along.

Neal’s heart slammed against his ribs. Illness seemed to be both amplifying his reactions to things and making them harder to control. He let out his breath on a count of three, and then counted to three drawing it in again. Repeated the process. He forced his watering eyes to focus on the license plate of the sedan, tapped the numbers on the watch knob as slowly and deliberately as he could.

Giraldi’s men chivvied them out of the Lincoln and toward the Ford, but Giraldi held up a hand.

“Something I should have done before we started,” he said. “Just a formality. Don’t want any unauthorized photos or nothing.”

“Where is this secret location of yours?” Alex asked, not deigning to look at the man who had started to pat her down with a bit more gusto than necessary. “Just wondering whether I should have packed an overnight bag.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” Giraldi himself relieved her of her purse. “Nothing like that.”

The goon tossed the contents of Alex’s pockets, including the pen Peter had given her, into a plastic bag, and moved on to Neal. He didn’t find much, but he passed Neal’s watch over to Giraldi for further inspection.

“Nice. Been meaning to get one like this myself.” Giraldi tucked it into his own pocket.

Neal cursed whatever bacteria had stolen his voice. If he could’ve spoken, he knew he would have been able to defuse whatever trouble they were in—not solve it necessarily, but at least get a sense of where they stood. Alex was trying, but Neal knew Giraldi, would have been able to soften him up, get him to reveal something: whether he knew the truth about Neal and Alex’s interest in his merchandise; who or what had tipped him off.

As it was, Neal was stuck trying to physically hold himself together while they were hurried into the new car, all pretense that they were honored guests forgotten.

“You don’t mind, do you?” Giraldi said as his men blindfolded them. “I do like to keep my secret locations secret.”

Ordinarily, Neal would have had a decent idea of where they were going even blindfolded. His knowledge of the city was excellent, and he’d taught himself how to measure distance using temporal rather than visual markers. But the new car seemed hotter than the last, and the fast, bumpy ride through darkness was making him faintly queasy.

Somewhat to his surprise, he felt Alex thread her fingers through his own and squeeze.

Forty-five minutes later, maybe less, they were pulled out of the car. Neal blinked in the sudden light when the blindfold came off, swayed a little on his feet before he could stop himself, and felt Alex’s hand close around his elbow. They were in a weed-grown vacant lot, hemmed in by brownstones with boarded-up windows. Somewhere in the Bronx, maybe Yonkers, Neal guessed, but he had no idea exactly where.

Two vans were parked in the lot as well—one large and white, the other small and black—both surrounded by more goons—these wearing muscle-tees instead of suits.

“Here we are.” Giraldi seemed satisfied, expansive, in his element. “I promised you a treat, and I’m not a man to renege on my promises. Boys.”

He pointed an impresario’s finger at the men near the white van. They swung open the rear doors. Neal gasped. There was a second barrier inside—a grille, really—and through it he could see flashes of crowded bodies: a pale face, a foot, a thin hand reaching through the narrow openings between the bars. It was nightmarish, and just as when Giraldi first had showed him the pictures, the idea of that abject confinement made him feel sick and choked. For a moment Neal thought he might be caught in a waking fever dream. But no, this was all too real.

He glanced at Alex. She stood straight, her beautiful face impassive, and anyone who didn’t know her would have thought her unmoved by the sight. But Neal could see the whites of her eyes start to show under the pupils, like a horse coming up on a fence it knew it couldn’t jump.

“Still want the one you picked out last night, Halden? I got a room in that building over there all fixed up, if you want a little privacy.” Giraldi sounded delighted with the discomfort he was causing. “But I forget—you have your lady friend with you today. You did tell her what was happening here, didn’t you? Now—how do you two usually like to work these things? Would she like her own? Or will it be one big happy threesome? Maybe she likes to watch? Or maybe—I’ve got it— _you_ like to watch—watch some girl eat her out, watch her come. That would be my choice, I have to say.”

He leered at Alex, got just close enough to run a finger along a lock of hair. She balked—jerked away with a kind of fearful awkwardness he never saw in her. And something in Neal broke. He flung himself in between Giraldi and Alex, snarling low and ugly because it was the only sound he could make.

“Whoa, hang on there, soldier.” Giraldi laughed and backed away, hands raised mockingly. “No harm meant. Just having a bit of fun. But I do think we can drop the charade now, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?” That was Alex, sounding reasonably steady again, but still half behind Neal’s shoulder.

“What I mean, Ms. Hunter, is that you can cut the crap. What kind of fool do you think I am? Someone has been poking their fingers into my affairs—my bank accounts, my leases—since late last night. Not very gracefully, either—set off about a dozen alerts. Now, since this _interest_ coincided so precisely with my telling Mr. Halden here about the special shipment coming in today—well, you can’t blame me for drawing my own conclusions. Sent a man after you last night, Nick, but he couldn’t find you anywhere. Interesting that you didn’t go home, though. So when you show up today, lady fair in tow, what am I supposed to think? One of you—probably both—is working for people who, shall we say, oppose my interests.”

And this would have been, should have been, the moment when Neal thought of some story—something that would placate Giraldi, convince him someone else was out to get him, not Nick Halden. He could actually think of several scenarios, a couple of Giraldi’s associates he could reasonably pin the blame on, but he couldn’t think of a way to get any of them across non-verbally. Maybe, if they’d had more time, he could have briefed Alex thoroughly enough that she could have mustered an explanation on her own. But she was working pretty much in the dark.

There was always the chance that Peter had gotten his transmission of the license plate, had managed to track the car, would swoop into rescue them at any moment. But Neal wasn’t holding his breath.

Alex, to her credit, gave it a shot. “Mr. Giraldi, I’ve known Nick a very long time. And in my experience, he’s has always played a straight game in these matters. I’m sure in your line of work—there are others who might be, shall we say, jealous of your success. Perhaps you should look to them first.”

“Others, Ms. Hunter?” Giraldi gave her a predatory look. “You perhaps? Are you just using Nick here as your stalking horse?”

Neal whirled through possibilities frantically, trying to think of some way to keep Alex in the clear. But in the end, all he could think of was the ridiculous expedient of putting himself more firmly in front of her and shaking his head and thumping his own chest. “Not her,” he mouthed. “Me.”

“Very gallant of you, Mr. Halden—but no less than I expected. And you can drop the laryngitis act now. Not very convincing.” Giraldi gave him a condescending pat on the face. And then raised his eyebrows. “Unless you really are that sick.” He grimaced and wiped his hand against his trousers, looking like he wanted to signal his boys for some Purell.

Alex chose that moment change strategy.

“Mr. Giraldi,” she said, voice striking the perfect note of affronted professional hauteur. “If you’re convinced it’s Nick here, I’m as shocked as you must be. But I assure that I only came along to help out a sick friend. And to catch glimpse of the rare antiquities I heard were on offer. I have no interest at all in these other ventures.” She gestured towards the truck. “If you do find that he has been trying to undermine you, I hope you will take whatever measures you consider appropriate.”

She smoothed her hair, pulled her clothes back into their usual flawless line, and took another step, distancing herself more decisively from Neal.

It was what he’d expected her to do. Alex had a fair amount of personal loyalty, but it took a lot to overturn her instinct for self-preservation. And there was always revenge for that time in Copenhagen to consider. He’d hoped she’d take the ticket out, he really had. But it was still a blow. Neal staggered a bit under it, feeling more alone than he had for a long time.

Giraldi peered at Alex, clearly torn between his continued suspicions and his legitimate concern about the consequences of harming Alex Hunter, a woman who had a lot of friends in this town. In the end, her reputation protected her, just as Neal had thought it would. It was one reason he’d asked for Alex in the first place—she brought her own insurance.

“My apologies, Ms. Hunter,” Giraldi said. “I will, however, need you to keep me company until I’m sure this shipment has reached its destination.”

Alex nodded her acknowledgement.

“As for you, Mr. Halden, or whatever the fuck your name is,” Giraldi’s growl turned nasty, “I’m afraid I can’t be as generous with you.”

Two of his men moved in for a more thorough search, removing his shoes and socks, his belt and tie. They weren’t gentle, and before they were done, Neal saved them the trouble of hitting him over the head by passing out, Alex’s crossed arms and unreadable face the last thing he saw before sliding into darkness.

+++

He was tossing on some horrible, churning sea. Wave after wave broke abruptly beneath him, heaving him first one way then another. He tried to reach out, to catch hold of something, anything, to steady himself, but he was bound, hand and foot, at the mercy of whatever force kept bouncing him against random surfaces, some hard, some disturbingly soft. Panic rose like burning bile in his throat. He wasn’t sure whether he would throw up first, or scream.

But he refused to do either. You’re dreaming, he told himself sternly: you’re ill. Bit by bit, he clawed his way back to consciousness. The smells came first, though he wished they hadn’t: sweat, urine, other less identifiable odors of humanity. He pulled open sticky eyes, and for a moment thought he been thrown back into his nightmare of the afternoon. He was in Giraldi’s white van; the waves had been the bumps in the road as it hurtled who knew where. A dozen faces, maybe more, peered at him out of semi-darkness: the faces from Giraldi’s phone, his special cargo.

The sight sent a fresh jolt of panic through him, and before he could stop himself he bucked and yanked hard against whatever was holding him. Nothing gave. His hands were bound behind his back and his feet were shackled at the ankle. Every movement drove the metal edge of the restraints into his flesh.

Neal forced himself to calm down, to breathe. If he had ever in his life felt worse, he couldn’t remember it. That time in Houston had been nothing to this. Everything muscle hurt and someone seemed to have driven a spike behind his right eye. His throat was a long line of shredded agony and he was shivering in a way he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop.

One of the faces detached itself from the group, and in some kind of twisted karmic irony it was the very one he had “chosen” from Giraldi’s wretched parade. Her hair was still shorn androgynously short, but in person she was more obviously female—her damp white tank top clinging to small, dark-nippled breasts. More alert, too, a sharp intelligence in her dark eyes. She squatted beside him cautiously, holding out a plastic bottle of water and said a few words in a language he couldn’t identify, much less understand: Hmong, maybe, or Laotian.

The offer was plain, though, and he nodded. The bottle was dirty and greasy-looking, clearly re-used many times, and the water in it was cloudy and brackish, but when she held it to his lips he had to force himself not to gulp it down, to take only the small sips that would make it past his swollen mess of a throat.

He felt slightly better when she took it away again, a few drops of liquid trailing down his face like cool heaven. A tiny smile appeared on her young, pinched face, and she pointed to herself.

“Mai,” she said. “Mai.” She pointed at him and raised her eyebrows.

“Neal,” he mouthed, and then tried to indicate by opening and closing his mouth that he had lost his voice.

She looked puzzled for a moment, and then like she understood. Touching his forehead with a skinny hand, she frowned and said something that clearly meant “you’re a mess, mister,” making a concerned “tsking” sound that was universal.

Neal bit down a hysterical giggle. Because, really, what were the chances that he’d land in the one situation in which laryngitis would make no difference at all? He’d have bet good money that outside of _Coca Cola_ and _Hollywood_ , he and these girls and boys didn’t have six shared words between them. They’d have been reduced to gestures no matter what.

He thumped his head back onto the metal floor of the truck. The thrum of the engine went right through him, merging with his own shudders. He wondered why Giraldi hadn’t killed him outright. Certainly not because he hoped to sell him on the market these kids were going to—Neal was far too long in the tooth for that. To save time? To avoid mess? Because he hoped the fever burning through Neal’s body would save him the trouble?

It might, Neal, acknowledged. And what could he do about it, chained like this? Even if Peter had gotten the license plate of the Ford, he didn’t have any information about this van, had no way of tracking it. There’d be no rescue from the FBI this time.

It came to him with hideous conviction that it was always meant to end like this, that he was always going to end up here—thrown into the back of a van with all the other nameless kids, the human flotsam of the world. He’d counted on his wits, his charm, his looks to lift him above this fate—but the minute those failed him that fate had claimed him as if it had been waiting for him this whole time.

He tried to convince himself that such thoughts were only the fever talking, seducing him into despair. But it was hard going. It seemed easier to give into exhaustion, to slide down into the dark, to stop thinking. But Mai and the other kids were talking—their young, sharp voices tethering him to consciousness, reminding him that no matter how much he wanted to give up on himself, he wasn’t quite ready to give up on them yet.

But what could he do? All he had were the clothes on his back, and precious few of those—no shoes, no belt, no tie.

Neal blinked, an idea forming slowly in his sluggish brain. He tried to piece it together. He was wearing the clothes Mozzie had brought over to Peter’s. The clothes Mozzie had brought over to Peter’s knowing that Neal was contemplating returning to a dangerous undercover mission. And if Mozzie had been anything like his usual paranoid self—and he always was—he had chosen those clothes very carefully.

The notion sparked a little burst of strength, and he twisted and bent, trying to catch the hem of his shirt in his mouth—to see if just maybe—

The movement set black spots swimming at the corners of his vision, a flare of pain down the muscles in his back, but he kept at it, willing himself closer.

“Sig to—sig to.” Mai was kneeling next to him again, hand on his shoulder, clearly telling him to calm down—probably thought he was having a febrile seizure or something.

He caught her eye and willed her to understand, gesturing at his shirt with his head, his chin.

She cocked her head at him and pursed her lips. Then she miraculously seemed to get what he was driving at, and ran her fingers along the placket of the shirt, between the buttons. Almost immediately, she stopped, her mouth a little “o” of astonishment. She pulled the broadcloth tight and held it up so he could see: a thin object, three inches long, sewn into the fabric.

Neal grinned at her and nodded. An answering smile lit up her face like sunshine and she quickly found three more—one more in the placket, two along the hem. She lifted an eyebrow in question and he nodded again. Permission granted, she bent over him, fingers, then teeth busy on the seams, until, with a little squeak of victory, she pulled the lock-picks from their hiding places.

She displayed all four of them to him, lined up on her hand, and he sent a silent hosanna of gratitude out to Mozzie.

Neal raised his eyebrows at her.

She shook her head, still smiling. “Ani,” she called, and another girl, even younger, hair in long greasy strands around her face, came forward.

Ani was sallow and grim-faced, but she picked up the tools with the deftness of a professional, and got Neal out of the cuffs around his hands almost as quickly as he could’ve done himself. That done, she passed Neal a pick so he could unlock the shackles on his feet himself, but he fumbled with it, shaking too hard for such fine work, and so she removed those too.

Liberated, Neal carefully sat up, the world rippling around him a bit as he did so. He ran a hand through his hair—and wished he hadn’t, it was matted and soaked with sweat and even he could feel how hot the skin on his scalp was. But it hardly mattered in the face of the fresh energy being free had given him.

He surveyed the interior of the van. There weren’t quite as many kids as he had thought—less than a dozen, all girls, as far as he could tell. He wondered what had happened to the boy Giraldi had shown him. The windows had been blacked out, but a little light filtered through from the front end, where a grille like the one on the back had been fitted between the body of the van and the driver’s seat. Through the front window, he could see a faceless three-lane highway speeding past. The sun was out, there were a decent number of cars on the road, and they could have been anywhere in the Northeast. Neal had no way of even knowing whether this was the same day he and Alex had met Giraldi, or whether he’d slept through to the next.

Moving hurt, and the van’s rattle and whir set his stomach roiling, but Neal got himself off the floor and closer to the front, making sure to stay out of the sight lines of the rearview mirror. One of the guys from the vacant lot drove, shoulder holster black against his grey tee; another one rode shotgun next to him, scalp showing through his bristled crew-cut, rifle slung across his knees. He was chatting and fiddling with the radio dial, paying no attention to the huddled humanity behind him, as relaxed as if he were moving furniture on a Saturday afternoon. Even if they hadn’t been armed, the two men looked more than a match for ten malnourished girls and one sick ex-conman.

Mai and Ani didn’t seem to have gotten that memo, however. Now that the tools of possible escape had been put in their hands, they were inspecting the bolts that held the grille to the van’s floor and ceiling. Maybe they didn’t realize the odds were stacked against them. Maybe they didn’t care, had decided that they’d rather go out fighting that meet the fate that awaited them at the end of the journey. He could see their point.

By the time he reached them, Mai was giving Ani a leg up so that she could dig a lock pick into the bolts holding the grille to the van’s ceiling. He put a hand on her arm and shook his head. If they were going to do this, they might as well give it their best shot. He pointed to the bolts on the floor: they should take those out first—it would be easier to hold it steady from the bottom while they worked the bolts on the top.

What would happen when and if they lowered the grille and faced the men with guns was anybody’s guess.

The girls followed his lead. The bolts were big, nothing you would ordinarily use a tiny lock to undo, but necessity is the mother of invention, and they wrenched and chiseled and pried and eventually one, then all, of the bolts came out. Their method down, they left another girls securing the grille’s corner and moved on to the other side.

When it came time to assay the top, they caught the first break Neal had had since the whole wretched adventure had begun: Crew Cut found a song he liked on the radio, some god-awful 90s power ballad, and turned it up full-blast, swaying in his seat and bellowing along to the music. The driver shook his head, but didn’t bother to turn it down. The noise masked the extra scuffling it took to reach the top bolts.

And then there they were, the grille loose, held in place only by their hands, ready to come down. But what then? They had no guns and very little strength. Neal was sure that if he had been thinking more clearly, he would have been able to devise some clever strategy, but as it was, he could think of nothing better than surprise. He tried to signal a rough plan to Mai, and she relayed something to the rest of the kids, though he had no idea to what degree it matched what he had hoped to convey.

He shrugged out his shirt and twisted it into a kind of rope, hoping he could use it as a garrote given the chance. Mai looked him, gave him a tiny vulpine smile, and did the same, standing straight and bare-breasted as an Amazon. Then Neal held out three fingers, two, one. When he closed his fist, the grille crashed to the floor of the van.

“What the fuck?” Crew Cut swung around. He sized up the situation in an instant and leveled his rifle at them. But Ani threw herself against his arm with a chilling high-pitched scream and the shot went low and wide, driving a hole through the floor of the van. Then the other kids were on him, pulling him over the seat, dragging the rifle out of his hands, and setting on him with a flurry of kicks and punches.

The driver twisted his head, eyes going wide at the sight. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he wrestled his gun out of his holster and fired into the writhing mass of the bodies on the floor. Someone screamed. But before he could get off another shot, Neal got the makeshift garrote around his neck and pulled him back hard against the seat.

Startled, the driver let of the steering wheel to scrabble at the thing around his neck with one hand. The other hand, the one holding the gun, flailed wildly, and another shot punched through the roof of the van. With no one in control, the van started to slow and list to the left, cutting across the traffic lanes. Horns blared, brakes screeched and Neal braced himself for the inevitable crash.

But before that could happen, Mai scrambled over the back of the seat, practically into the driver’s lap and grabbed the wheel. Is she old enough know how to drive? Neal wondered incongruously. Can she even reach the gas pedal? The answer to both questions was apparently yes. The van sped up again, seemed to correct its course.

Which was good, because Neal still had his hands full with the driver. With the last reserves of his strength, he hauled the man backwards over the seat, overbalancing in the process so that the man landed heavily on top of him. They rolled together on the floor, both trying to get some purchase on the gun the man was still holding. The driver was by far the stronger party, but Neal had an urgency born of desperation and finally he pried the weapon out of the man’s hand. With a feral sound he had never heard himself make, he slammed the butt of the gun into the man’s head and was rewarded by seeing him slump into unconsciousness.

Neal was just about ready to follow him there, but he forced himself up again, supporting himself heavily on the back of the seat. His vision was telescoping in and out alarmingly, but he could see Crew Cut spread-eagled unconscious on the floor, four girls sitting on him bearing the grins of triumphant warriors. Mai was clinging white-knuckled to the wheel, gunning the van forward at seventy-miles per hour, with seemingly little thought to the other drivers on the road. Neal caught a glimpse of a sign as they sped past—Fredericksburg: they were already in Northern Virginia.

With a groan dragged out of the bottom of his being, he clumsily levered himself into the front seat, thinking to take the wheel from her. But before he could do so, something else rose up in front of them. A line of backed up cars, and ahead of them, a road-block. Not just a road-block: at least four Virginia State Police cars, an EMT truck with flashing lights, and a goddamn helicopter sitting squat into the middle of the highway. Relief flooded through Neal so strongly he thought he might faint. As Mai reluctantly slowed the van, he reached across her and pressed the horn as hard and as long as he could.

+++

Something must have happened then. Maybe someone noticed the bullet hole in the roof—or maybe just that the van was being driven by a tiny, topless girl.

Neal didn’t know. It seemed to him a scant instant between his honking the horn and Peter’s face appearing in the passenger-side window, wearing a worried, heartsick expression Neal hoped never to see again in this lifetime. Peter opened the door, said his name, and reached in an arm to help him out. But Neal was too far gone for that. He fell, literally fell, towards Peter, and felt, with his last remnants of awareness, Peter’s arms under his back, his knees; Peter lifting him up.

+++

He came to again briefly to see a face he didn’t know—lean, dark-skinned, serious—leaning over him. “My name is Rakim,” the face said, “I’m going to take your vitals now, Mr. Caffrey, just relax.”

Neal nodded, or he tried to. He was lying on a gurney, he thought, still outside. He felt bad that he couldn’t explain to Peter what had happened, but as Rakim worked, he gradually became aware of voices—first Mai’s, rapid, urgent, and then an older voice, female, speaking first in the same language, and then in English. Of course. Peter, being Peter, had brought not only a helicopter and a medic, but also a translator, probably six translators, to deal with any language they might encounter.

He laughed, and Peter himself materialized next to him.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, a hand on Neal’s shoulder.

Neal wanted to tell him, he did, but it all slipped away.

+++

He surfaced again to the sound of monitors whirring and the slightly acrid smell of hospital air. Nothing hurt any more, even his throat had subsided to a vague scratchiness, but he hung there for a moment in the cool, white emptiness, struggling with the irrational conviction that he’d washed up on some desolate alien shore, utterly alone.

But no. He turned his head, fighting the massive weariness holding him down, and there was Peter, sitting in a chair by the window, hunched over some file, frowning in an inimitably Peter-like way. The sight was like a lighthouse beacon on a foggy night, and Neal said Peter’s name aloud like it was the signal that would bring him home.

And then realized, with utter joy, that his voice worked. It sounded dreadful, like a rusty hinge over sandpaper, but it worked.

Peter looked up, a delighted grin spreading over his face. “Now there’s something I’ve missed,” he said, coming over to the bed and pouring Neal some water. “You’ll be sweet-talking the ladies in no time.”

Neal smiled back, but there were things he needed to know. “How—“ his voice caught, and he took another swallow of water. “How did you know where we were? Or did you just have road-blocks up on all the interstates?”

Peter shook his head. “Alex. She lifted Giraldi’s phone right off him—texted the license plate of that van to the Bureau hotline, along with his location. Seems he underestimated her. Maybe we all did.”

“Huh.” Neal absorbed that information. “Is she—? Did you speak to her?”

“Nah. She was long gone by the time Diana and Jones picked Giraldi up. I assume she’s alright. Who else would have sent that?” Peter gestured to a bunch of irises in a cut glass vase. Another old signal, one giving the all clear. In the center of the bouquet was a single yellow Marguerite Daisy—the national flower of Denmark.

Neal smiled ruefully. He assumed that meant he still owed her one.

“And Mai?” he asked. “The others?”

“Ah.” Neal could tell from the look on Peter’s face that he’d been as impressed with the captive girls as Neal had been. “They’re okay. A bit worse for wear from what they’d been through—physically, that is. I hate to think of what it’s done to them otherwise. But they’re okay. We got them into the system as human trafficking victims, so they can claim refugee status. They’ll be able to get some help setting up new lives here.”

“Good.” And Neal did feel a wash of relief that they were being taken care of—if anybody would take advantage of the resources offered he expected Mai and Ani and the others would. Still, to be so young and on your own in a country where you didn’t even speak the language. To be so alone. He shuddered to think of it, felt his face crumpling.

Peter seemed to take his expression as a sign of pain and exhaustion. He leaned over and touched Neal’s forehead, pushed strong fingers through his hair. Touch Neal Caffrey Day didn’t seem to be over yet. And Neal couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Get some rest,” Peter said. “The doctors said you were this close to septicemia.” He held two fingers close together. “You must be beat.”

Neal nodded, rendered mute by emotion now, not illness, and obediently settled himself on the pillow.

“Think I’ll stay for a bit, if you don’t mind.” Peter drew the chair closer to the bed. “About ten times quieter in here than the office—I’m actually getting some work done for once.”

He sat, opening his file again with one hand, resting the other lightly on Neal’s shin, and resumed his official work frown.

Neal watched him. Did Peter know? Know how close Neal had come to tumbling into the ancient abyss of his own fears. Probably. It was the kind of thing Peter always knew and never talked about. Not that it mattered. Peter was here now; and between them, he and Mozzie, and Mai, and even Alex, had beaten off crawling shadows of fate for the time being.

He let the warmth of Peter’s hand anchor him as he slid back into sleep.

 

 _the end_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cracks in a Heart of Stone (the Alex Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1585739) by [embroiderama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama)




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